Change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior in public organizations: appropriateness, opportunity, risk, and public service motivation

Abstract

Change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) can help public organizations adapt to evolving environmental conditions, mitigate resource scarcity, assimilate promising technologies, and combat the perception that public servants are indifferent to the real needs of citizens. This chapter discusses the nature of change-oriented OCB and the factors that make it more or less likely in public organizations. Despite its benefits, public servants often lack incentives to pursue change, and the cultural, structural, and interpersonal dimensions of organizational experience can reduce the perceived appropriateness of and opportunities for change-oriented OCB, while also increasing its attendant risks. I argue that public service motivation (PSM) can act as a countervailing force in organizational contexts that are hostile to change. Employees with high levels of PSM may take an instrumental view of their organization, make an internal attribution of sources of behavioral control, and, finally, have a willingness to bear personal sacrifices to benefit the public. Consequently, PSM should facilitate a rationalization of change-oriented OCB even in organizational contexts that discourage it. I close by suggesting that integrating change-oriented OCB authentically into the public sector research agenda will require reconciling it with the multi-dimensional nature of performance in public organizations.